Early Review – The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Release Date: September 5, 2023
ISBN-13 : 978-1616963620
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley.com
Rating: 4/5 stars
“Delia Welegtabit discovered two things during her childhood on a South Pacific island: her love for mathematics and a novel that isn’t supposed to exist. But the elusive book proves unexpectedly dangerous. Oskar Lens, a science fiction-obsessed mobster in the midst of an existential crisis, will stop at nothing to find the novel. After Delia’s husband Levi goes missing, she seeks help from Daniel Chase, a young, face-blind book dealer.
The infamous novel Lode Stars was written by the infamous Eugene Charles Hartley: legendary pulp science-fiction writer and founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes. In Hartley’s novel, a doppelganger of Delia searches for her missing father in a strange star system. But is any of Lode Stars real? Was Hartley a cynical conman on a quest for wealth and immortality, creating a religion he did not believe in? Or was he a visionary who truly discovered the secrets of the universe?”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this as an ebook through NetGalley to review.
Thoughts: I liked this but didn’t love it as much as some of Tidhar’s other books. It gets pretty abstract at points and can be a bit hard to follow. It is interesting food for thought and beautifully written though.
The book is broken into different parts that follow different characters. At first we follow is Delia, a math professor whose husband, Levi, goes suddenly missing after obsessing over a book called Lode Stars. Then we follow Daniel Chase, a young book dealer that Delia comes to for help when her husband goes missing. Next we hear from Oskar Lens a mobster obsessed with finding Lode Stars. Then we also hear from Eugene Hartley himself as he writes Lode Stars and then back to Delia but this is Delia as shown in the book Lode Stars as she journeys back to Earth.
The theory that goes throughout the book is around a religion that was created from the Lode Stars book that speculates that everything in the world is a construct and nothing is really real anymore. There is some theory that the world is being recycled through black holes (I may have misunderstood this theory, it’s a bit ambiguous). The story kind of twists around itself as we journey through space and time and reality to mostly end up back where we started.
I enjoyed the beautiful writing and found this very readable. However, it can be hard to follow at times and ends up being a bit ambiguous. It’s one of those books that I think you have to read through a few times to really understand everything that is happening here. I enjoyed it but I didn’t love it and I probably won’t pick it up again.
My Summary (4/5): Overall this was interesting and provides some intriguing food for thought. However, it’s also a bit twisty, turny…hard to follow…and ambiguous. Some of the theories explored here are unique and interesting, but it takes some effort to try and understand what happens in the end. This isn’t my favorite Tidhar book, I liked “The Escapement” better. However, it did feed my itch for a unique and different read…which is something Tidhar excels at.
